WASHINGTON ― House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) met an unnamed source on White House grounds the day before he alleged that President Donald Trump and his team were subjected to surveillance during the final months of the Obama administration.
Nunes met the source on White House grounds last Tuesday in order to view sensitive information in a “secure location,” Jack Langer, Nunes’ communications director, said Monday in a statement. Langer did not respond to a question about why Nunes and his source did not use a sensitive compartmented information facility ― known as a SCIF ― on Capitol Hill instead.
Last Wednesday, the day after meeting with his source, Nunes told reporters that he viewed several dozen reports showing that members of Trump’s team ― and possibly the president himself ― were the subjects of “incidental” collection during routine surveillance targeting suspected foreign spies. He said the surveillance was legal but that he was concerned that the names of Trump surrogates were “unmasked” in internal intelligence reports. After briefing reporters, Nunes went to the White House to share his revelations with Trump ― whose team is under investigation by the FBI for possible ties to Russian government officials who allegedly interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
Asked several times last week to confirm that he did not receive his information from the White House, Nunes avoided answering directly.
“You can ask me every single name that exists on the planet and I’m still not going to tell you who our sources are,” he said Friday.
The Monday revelation that Nunes met his source on White House grounds to review the documents that backed his allegation added to the speculation that the chairman’s disclosure was coordinated with the president’s team.
Last week, Democrats on the intelligence committee accused Nunes, who was a member of Trump’s transition team, of committing a political stunt aimed at legitimizing the current president’s unfounded allegations that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Although Nunes has repeatedly said there is no evidence to back Trump’s claim, he has implied that intelligence community officials loyal to the Obama administration improperly used legal surveillance methods to monitor Trump’s team.
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